CHINA will not resume negotiations with the Philippines over their territorial dispute in the South China Sea if the discussions are based on the ruling of an arbitral tribunal in The Hague, the official China Daily said Monday, quoting unnamed sources.
The negotiations have been stalled for years, and the tribunal is due to announce its ruling on July 12, based on a complaint filed by the Philippines in 2013.
Observers have voiced hopes that the chilly relations between Beijing and Manila will end after Rodrigo Duterte took office as the 16th Philippine president on Thursday.
“Manila must put aside the result of the arbitration in a substantive approach,” one of the sources quoted by China Daily said.
The sources also said Beijing is ready to start negotiations on issues such as joint development and cooperation in scientific research if the new government puts the tribunal’s ruling aside before returning to the table for talks.
China has refused to take part in the arbitral proceedings partly because the case involves sovereignty and maritime delimitation, which it declared in 2006 are issues that are not subject to any third-party arbitration.
Although the outgoing Philippine government said it had exhausted all diplomatic approaches before seeking arbitration, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Manila did not embark on any serious two-way negotiations over the claims it had raised with the tribunal.
Li Guoqiang, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of Chinese Borderland Studies, said in disputes concerning the South China Sea, “negotiation is the only choice and the only viable approach.”
“Confrontation will never help to resolve the South China Sea issue,” he said.
“No matter how the new president acts on the ruling, diplomatic negotiation is second to none. Using the ruling as a condition for resuming diplomatic consultations will not be viable,” Li said.
Zhu Feng, professor and executive director at Nanjing University’s China Center for Collaborative Studies of the South China Sea, said it will be “a very important and ideal start” if the new Philippine government repairs ties with China.
He said this will be the case if it “effectively manages in a reasoned manner the impact brought by the ruling on the existing bilateral disputes between China and the Philippines.”
Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr. said the Philippines was not afraid of negotiating with China and would not negotiate out of fear.
But Yasay said the Philippines will strictly follow to the rule of law.
“We will… be resolute in our upholding our sovereignty rights and right of self-determination. We gallantly seek peace, not war. And yes, we must put it to work in multilateral or bilateral negotiations,” Yasay said.
He said that the Philippines must show diplomacy “in many areas of cooperation with all nations.”